Search form

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Marry for Love

Those who don’t marry for love in our culture are considered unlucky, suspect, manipulative, exploitative, and bad. We feel they are either doing something wrong or there is something wrong with them. It makes us feel everything from sympathy to contempt for these folks because most of us were taught that love is the only “right” reason to tie the knot.

But if you really think about it, love is a luxury. When you marry for love, it generally means you have all — or at least most — of your other needs met (like food, shelter, warmth, etc). That may explain why those with fewer financial resources also have lower marriage rates: If you’re worried about your survival or safety, you’re not going to be focusing on finding the man or woman of your dreams — unless of course this dream person is your ticket out of your terrible home life, dreary financial picture or scary “singledom.”

Procreation has always been a factor in why people married, but up until about two hundred years ago or so, people in the West married more for political or financial gain than for love.

The Victorian Era and the Industrial Revolution (1800s) created two important changes in how people lived: Romance became all the rage and technological advances made life much easier. Prior to these developments, divorce was incredibly rare but when love entered the picture as the reason to marry, dissolutions became more commonplace.

Women’s Rights, No-Fault Divorce laws and the greater emphasis on the pursuit of personal happiness in the ‘70s, opened the door to more choice and, therefore, more divorce. Dissolution rates spiked up to 50% (up from 11% in the fifties) and have not changed much in the last 50 years.

We’ve come a long way with technology and modern living but have we actually come too far in our conjugal love-centric culture?

What experts like Andrew Cherlin (Marriage-Go-Round) and Stephanie Coontz (Marriage, A History) tell us is that, in our attempt to make marriage stronger by raising the bar to meet our higher love and romance needs, we have seriously weakened the institution. These are both highly changeable emotions: When love wanes, the marriage gets shaky; when the romance stops, the nuptials die.

People whose primary reason to marry is other than love — such as to have children with someone they believed would be a good co-parent, to have financial security, or for companionship — generally have longer and perhaps better marriages because their choices are made for a defined purpose. Additionally, their expectations of marriage and their mate are less unrealistic. Their spouse wasn’t expected to be “The One.” They merely needed to be Mr. or Mrs. “Good Enough.”

Some people call this settling, but we are seeing the wisdom of marriages like these more and more.

I’m not saying love shouldn’t be on the list of things that need to be in your relationship, but it doesn’t need to be number one (and perhaps shouldn’t be).

Here are the three reasons I think marrying primarily for love is not wise:

1. Love is a changeable emotion. As quickly as you fall in love, you can fall out of love. Then what? Either the relationship ends or it becomes toxic. If love is your primary connection, the glue is gone.

2. Love does not make for a strong enough foundation. Yes, love is strong but, due to the fact that it can evaporate, it is not something that can stand alone as the basis for a long-term relationship (especially when kids are involved). Anything built on a foundation of love is subject to crumbling.

3. Love is far from “all you need.”You need mutual respect, shared goals and compatibility way more than you need love to have a sustainable, lasting relationship. People “fall in love with love” just as Kim Kardashian showed us, because they think it will carry them the distance. We all want to be wanted and we love to love yet, if you had a recipe for a strong, healthy relationship, it might look like this: 1 Cup respect; 1 Cup shared goals; 3 Cups compatibility, 1 Tablespoon love, 1 teaspoon attraction (optional!).

If you are open to being interviewed by us, be sure to put your contact info at the bottom of the survey or email me at info@changingmarriage.com.

If you have a Covenant Marriage (a more religious marriage based on love and service for God — legal only in Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana), I’d like to hear from you too. And please forward this request on to anyone else you know who may be interested in speaking with me.

We will not publish your real name or identifiable details in our book. Thank you.

I am single and never married, so take what I say with a grain of salt. However, I cannot imagine entering into any sort of intimate relationship, much less marriage, without having a large portion of love for the other person. In this case I mean love in the sense of

* deeply caring for the other person
* being deeply invested in his/her happiness
* viewing life from his/her eyes as well as my own (e.g., feeling her pain, her joy, and her frustration as my own). This could be useful when conflict arises (to see her side of the argument).
* wanting to make him/her feel appreciated and loved

Note that I do not mean "love" in the sense of the feeling of weightlessness one has when entering a new romantic relationship.

My question for you is this: is there room for lots of hugs, kisses, cuddles, and overall warmth and caring in this healthy marriage you have prescribed? I'm not sure I want to get married if the only healthy marriages are cold, emotionless experiences.

I got lucky and married my best friend...after we had already become friends with a deep mutual appreciation. Hugs, kisses, passion and warmth have only grown better the more deeply we know each other. Another plus is that we have the same sense of humor, and make each other laugh all the time! For me, it was not love at first sight (although he says it was for him), but then I have had infatuations & flings before that always seemed to end in disaster! This is my second marriage. At the age of 62, I am the envy of my gal pals because my husband is so affectionate! We get to spoil each other for the rest of our lives...what could be better than that?

How wonderful to discover that there are other lucky people in the world! I only married once, but made a good choise. As you said, it wasn't love at first sight for me, though my housband tells me it was for him. I cannot think of a better choise for me. Before this I had a stormy love-all-over-it relation which went to pieces after 4 years. True, that was my lesson. Today, at 38, after almost 16 years since I met my housband, we have a beautiful 6 years old boy and I strongly hope we'll be able to live the rest of our lives beautifully. Thank you so much for sharing such an experience and showing the non-believers that it is possible! All the best!

To paraphrase Paul, "if I have the respect and shared goals to sign a dozen binding, unbreakable contracts, but I have not love, then I am merely an honest business partner. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."

could not agree MORE!! he said it himself, and he said it well...he will never know the feeling of being madly in love....and that's the prize of life...all of those other things fade, but love, real love, never does.

Thank you for your comment on the article Three Reasons You Should Never Marry for Love. As it turns out, we would like to use this comment in the book and we just need to know what part of the country you live in, how old you and your wife are, as well as a bit more on why the marriage is bland or unsatisfying to you.

Have you gone to counseling or tried to make it better? ANything else you can or want to tell us about your situation?

I hadn't looked back on my comment for some time and was surprised to see your response.

You can use it for whatever its worth to you.

We are in our mid 50's, live in Florida. And no, we never went to counseling. Our marriage isn't bad technically.

My wife says she's happy and "couldn't live without" me. That's why I'm trapped. I'm not happy and I want desperately to just not be married anymore, mainly just to be an independent person again. Our marriage has been nothing but work and stress and it has taken its toll on us. But, I can't bring myself to hurt her.

Its all very depressing and I feel like life is just too f''king long.

If I married for love and it burned out eventually, I think that would have been better. Passion at least feels like living.

I hadn't looked back on my comment for some time and was surprised to see your response.

You can use it for whatever its worth to you.

We are in our mid 50's, live in Florida. And no, we never went to counseling. Our marriage isn't bad technically.

My wife says she's happy and "couldn't live without" me. That's why I'm trapped. I'm not happy and I want desperately to just not be married anymore, mainly just to be an independent person again. Our marriage has been nothing but work and stress and it has taken its toll on us. But, I can't bring myself to hurt her.

Its all very depressing and I feel like life is just too f''king long.

If I married for love and it burned out eventually, I think that would have been better. Passion at least feels like living.

Dear Anonymous! We will be using your quote in our book and ideally, we'd like to get more demographics on you! Please contact me by going to my www.changingmarriage.com website and emailing me. Please put PT.com in the subject line so I can easily spot your email.

I married to great man, stable in all ways. I was not in love but had a respect for him and we share the same goals and I liked him. I did not get that excited feeling around him though, and I did not love being with him for hours nad hours without other people around. 8 years later I still do not enjoy sex with him and find it hard not to be very attracted to other men nad easilty fall for them, even though I do not act on it. In marriage you have sex, having sex with someone you are not in love with is not a good experience... Marry someone you are in love with, because you will have that basis to come back to in problems. When things get bad with someone you have never been in love with, it feels hopeless. If you view marriage as only a contract to get what you want in life without love then you will be happy possibly without love, but if you need passion and the feelings, then you will never be happy marrying without being in love.

This has some sadness to it. And some beauty. Somehow I would not expect a man to say this today. Maybe 40 yrs ago.I thought so many people are just into money and career. Sometimes wisdom is important. It's never too late. I thinking it's tougher close to age 80...you are probably much younger than 80. I say go for it.
You only live once.

I think the point is that the kind of love you mean takes time to grow. It can grow very strongly over the years of a marriage but will have a much easier time doing so if the marriage is based on the factors described and not on the "feeling of weightlessness" you mentioned.

Myself, I can't imagine marrying someone I don't already love as a friend.

Totally Agree. Although it is true that if couples do not have a certain level of compatibility and shared goals are destined to separate it is a fact that love is one of the most important requirements to be united. Otherwise it is like a different kind of prostitution where we marry in exchange for something, where we sell our time and bodies to gain financial security or another yearning.

Men shouldn't even date under this feminazi totalitarian police state regime which has criminalized normal male sexuality and fatherhood.

And someone needs to hit Andy up with the proverbial clue-by-four that 99.99% of the so-called normal regular women who are the objects of his fantasy sat around with deer-in-the-headlights looks on their faces while stupidly allowing this to be done on their behalf.

It will take decades or generations for women to rediscover the value of having individual men in their lives, if this is even possible. So long as their concern is "settling", the process hasn't even begun, and the current cycle of greed, corruption, and destruction continues.

I agree completely with Andy. Marriage must have the deep caring and appreciation for the other to be of worth. It is that deep wanting to work together for the other's benefit, that must be shared by both, that keeps marriages together in hard times as well as good. That is extremely rare in this "As long as this is what I want or I'm out of here." marriages. All legal paperwork is done before the marriage preparing for the divorce. This mentality is the same everything is disposable attitude that is the root of so many problems mankind faces now. The fact that you faulted women's rights was just the same extremist horror that is being used to take women's rights away. Shame on you. And if it is merely a financial/business arrangement a contract without marriage would be best. Business contracts should stay business and not be personal. What a hopeless, cold, emotionless view point. I am glad you were honest in that you claimed only to be an expert in divorce for you know nothing about marriage.

I agree completely with Andy. Marriage must have the deep caring and appreciation for the other to be of worth. It is that deep wanting to work together for the other's benefit, that must be shared by both, that keeps marriages together in hard times as well as good. That is extremely rare in this "As long as this is what I want or I'm out of here." marriages. All legal paperwork is done before the marriage preparing for the divorce. This mentality is the same everything is disposable attitude that is the root of so many problems mankind faces now. The fact that you faulted women's rights was just the same extremist horror that is being used to take women's rights away. Shame on you. And if it is merely a financial/business arrangement a contract without marriage would be best. Business contracts should stay business and not be personal. What a hopeless, cold, emotionless view point. I am glad you were honest in that you claimed only to be an expert in divorce for you know nothing about marriage.

You're comment was better then the entire article. Those who do not personally know what real love is like shouldn't be writing article much less books on the subject. True love is hard to find and harder to hold onto it's unconditional which most people in today's society don't even understand the concept of. It might be harder to have a working marriage based on love but aren't the most rewarding things in life usually the hardest to achieve?

Well although I disagree with the author I have to say that she is right about the fact the attitude you show here exists only some last 200 years max and even not everywhere. Before that it was arranged marriages and everything that the author was talking about. She also pointed it exactly right that there were 2 factor that allowed the new attitude to take over. 1. technical progress that improved our live and made it possible to be little better than just survival 2. the Victorian romantic literature that is a consequence of the fact that upper class had too much time free from surviving and wars that allowed them to think a little about sexuality, spirituality etc.
I do believe that there is no reasons to go back. Even if it makes marriage less stable.
Spirituality and The Road Less Traveled - M. Scott Peck was mentioned here. I think we should be less selfish and if we love a person we should let him or her enjoy sexuality even if it is not with us. Sexual love can't be bought, but it even can't be earned by a good behavior even by spiritual love. If I love a guy and I see that his is not sexually attracted to me I should let him enjoy his sexuality with another person. Same I would expect for myself. Although we still can care about each other, can be friends, can spiritually love each other, but we don't need to have sex with each other if there is no sexual attraction. Actually this is the most challenging. Instead we want to call the ex partner a cheater, want to punish him or her. Be able to enjoy seen person you love is happy - that is how I understand the idea to expend love to spiritual level, to the level of all mankind. And this actually demands a self control and ability to understand that there is no immediate reward.

Of course, i won't even get into the definition of Love. But don't you think it is unfair that they are confining it's definition to that of "attraction". It is more vast than that.
Love can be between a parent and child and between two friends. If there is true love, then there must be mutual trust between two people.
When i say "unprofessional", i am actually opposing that they are confining the concept of love to much smaller things.
That's all i meant.
:) :)

Spot on, one couldn't say it any better.
I understand the author's point of view, but I think the whole argument needs to be rephrased and definitions need to be re-established. There is also underlying bitterness, again, words need to be chosen carefully in order to get the message across properly.

I completely agree with you. Love IS respect, love IS compatibility, love IS shared goals. I'm not sure what their definition of "love" is that they are referring to, but it is definitely a lot more shallow than the love I've known.

I'm pretty sure the author is referring to romantic love. She is talking about Western ideas of marrying for love, so think about it. What kind of love is being implied by Western marriage? It's always romantic love. Correct me if I'm wrong.. ?

I agree. The word "love" should be replaced with the word LUST throughout this article. And, it's true, unfortunately, that most modern relationships are based on lust and then routine co-depedency rather than love. Love is far more rare than anyone realizes. Think about it.... would your current "lover," partner have even acknowledged your presence if you were 100 pounds heavier?? The answer, 99.9% of the time is NO. Therefore, your partner does not "love" you, he/she lusts for your body. Evolve people. Or continue to break-up, get divorced, be miserable, stay together for the kids.

I believe the author is referring to love and not lust, as later in the piece they even reference "attraction" in the recipe for a lasting relationship.

As for your lover noticing you if you were 100 pounds heavier.. Of course they wouldn't, because physical attraction is most often the first thing to occur in a relationship, with deeper feelings developing along the way.

To think that physical attraction should play no part in love is utterly rediculous.

3 cups of compatibility may have left the cake out in the rain and I don't think that we can bake it cos we'll never have that recipe again. I would have thought respect and common goals were more important than compatibility, because that changes too. People grow and change. And I think you left out some important ingredients, specifically commitment (unless it's one of your shared goals). I'm tempted to add acceptance, but I think that's part of respect.

But I cringe at the thought of sharing a bed or having sex with someone who I do not actually love/who I am not in love with. I also refuse to be in a sexless marriage.
Love is a good motivator-it encourages people to work hard in their profession(to support their family and put food on the table) or become a better, stable person, take responsibility for his or her actions, etc.

Assuming you can trust your parents to choose a good mate for you, I actually really like the idea of arranged marriage. Arranged marriages necessarily change the attitudes that partners must enter the relationship with.

Rather than coming in full of romantic love, almost hoping not to later lose the attraction felt and end up divorced, you come into a union with a stranger -and you better hope they turn out to be a good person- because the attitude in arranged marriage is that you will have to make it work, regardless. Rather than an initial high which plateaus and gradually decreases, initially you have a low-emotional bond which you work on gradually increasing.

Of course, not everybody enters into romantic-love based marriages with an attitude biased towards separating if the love wanes, but for those that do, they can hardly be blamed, in my opinion. For if marriages are always initiated based on this type of love, and then later this love is gone and also hasn't been lucky enough to have developed into any more satisfying type of deeper love, logically there is no reason to stay married.

Therefore, it is undeniably more sensible to forget about Hollywood ideas of romance, and instead start a marriage based on the stronger initial foundations of partnership, commitment, and dedication, rather than something so fickle as love. When you think about it, it's actually quite silly to intentionally start something as serious as marriage in such a clear disadvantage for long-term success.

I think you're conflating romantic love with that which is deeper and lasting. That kind of love requires a degree of trust, respect and friendship that sustains a couple. A mature pair, regardless of how "romantic" their early years are/were, understand this.

It is not at all about being "sensible". It is about being enough of an adult to understand that while "chemistry" matters, it is not the bedrock of a lasting marriage.

I don't believe I have conflated anything, as I said marriages are initiated based on romantic love in this culture, and if the couple are not lucky enough for a deeper love to have later developed then the attitude is to get divorced.

I agree with you that a mature couple will understand that they need to work on a deeper love (you didn't mention the work part but I assume you meant that), and not just rely on their earlier romantic years to keep them going, but the problem is that marriage set up on this basis of romantic love, actually sets the couple up at a disadvantage, and a higher likelihood that the end of the romance will equal the end of the marriage.

A couple must actively work to overcome this, in order to stay married, hence my choice of the phrase 'lucky enough', because when set up under this ideal of romantic love, few people will realise automatically what they need to do to keep the marriage going.

I agree with you Andy. Love isn't the intoxicated feeling when you first fall for someone. Love is a deeper, almost instinctual caring. I can't imagine a marriage lasting that's as cold as the writer describes. To me, respect and empathy spring from deep love, not separately from it. I guarantee that I won't always like the person I marry; I definitely won't feel constantly blissful or think they are flawless. Humans can never be more than "good-enough" since we are imperfect. Believing someone would be a good co-parent is important. Having the same general idea of where they want their life to head is also important since they plan to share that life. Yet, a marriage with 1 Tbs of love to 4 cups of other ingredients would make me miserable and angry.

This is a silly article. Obviously, Ms. Gadoua has never experienced the kind of authentic love as described by Andy in the previous response - deeply caring for the other person, being deeply invested in his/her happiness, viewing life from his/her eyes as well as my own (e.g., feeling her pain, her joy, and her frustration as my own,) wanting to make him/her feel appreciated and loved. Seriously, Kim Kardashian? The fleeting feelings that she describes have nothing to do with true love - which goes much deeper than a feeling and involves a conscious choice to care for someone more than yourself. How sad that Ms. Gadoua has no understanding of love beyond the superficial, ego boosting, self interest, lust-driven example of Kim K and her ridiculous exploits. Of course, those things can never be the basis of a life long committed love relationship. That's because those things have nothing to do with love! If more people got married because of true, self-less love, rather than adolescent, goofy emotions, our society would have fewer divorces and healthier families. For goodness sakes, Ms. Gadoua, stop writing this garbage! Focus on others instead of yourself for more than a minute and maybe you'll experience what true love is all about. (BTW, This year I'm celebrating 30 years of a happy and monogamous marriage to someone who matters more to me than feelings - and that's not due to luck. It's due to mutual trust and loving devotion.)